


The Trouble With Exposition

by OldToadWoman



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-05
Updated: 2011-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:33:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldToadWoman/pseuds/OldToadWoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>story dice: the Doctor is being a meddling arse and there's a lot of running<br/>(DW story dice are twenty-sided yet each face is the same)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trouble With Exposition

**Author's Note:**

> cast: Doctor #11, Amy, Rory, and a super-secret cameo appearance by someone old school  
> (River Song gets mentioned a lot, but she's getting into trouble somewhere else.)
> 
> spoilers/time line: After “A Good Man Goes To War” (2011 broadcasts)
> 
> note: British spelling
> 
> This is one of those speculative stories that will almost certainly have to be relegated to Alternate Universe status as soon as the next episode airs. As of today though, it's still plausible. (And if you believe in the existence of infinite parallel universes, then somewhere it has already happened.)

The trouble was that people always wanted him to explain when what they really needed to be doing was running. Right now. Very, very fast.

"Talk!" Amy insisted. She did not move. He felt that he'd been very clear on the importance of moving so this was especially frustrating.

Rory glared. His knees bounced in a way that suggested that _they_ were, in fact, very much ready for the running thing to be happening, but Rory himself just bounced at Amy's side and _glared_. Not for the first time, the Doctor thought that Rory reminded him of a very tall puppy. He had an unfortunate feeling that this particular puppy might be a biter.

"It's complicated," the Doctor said, "and we're in a bit of a hurry."

"Why?" she demanded.

The Doctor pointed vaguely in the direction of the unpleasant gurgling sound. Even humans could work that part out without explanation, surely?

"Why are we even _here_?" Amy asked.

"It's complicated!"

"You said that. And if you'd said something useful instead, we might know more than we did the first time I asked. That's how explanations work."

A Grimblinger wobbled round the corner and Amy barely glanced at it before shooting off a tentacle with her laser rifle.

Amy Pond was possibly the most terrifying person he'd ever met—which was probably appropriate given how things had turned out.

"Run?" he suggested again.

"Answer at least one question first. Any question. Pick one. I don't care which, just start explaining."

One tentacle down, the Grimblinger was significantly slowed, but it was still oozing determinedly in their direction. The floor and walls greyed and roughened where it touched them. "Uh...."

Rory jump-started the conversation. "Why are we here? Where is our daughter? Where has River gone? Who is Rassilon? Why are time bugs trying to kill us?" Amy shot the Grimblinger just as it was lashing out at Rory's ankle and this time she hit it square between the antennae and in the resulting explosion one of its gears whizzed narrowly past Rory's ear. " _And why have they got gears in the middle of their gooey bits?!_ "

The three of them ran down the corridor while the Doctor lectured them on the difference between gears and gyro-time-stabilisers.

"Oh, you just had to ask him _that_ , did you?" Amy grumbled.

"Sorry," Rory apologised. "I was rattled."

The Doctor found a panel. If it were connected to the main grid, it might be useful.

"Keep talking!"

She was making it very difficult to focus, but if he could just get the sonic screwdriver to synch up properly with the right harmonic....

Another Grimblinger wobbled into view and this time Amy hit it right in the gyro-time-stabiliser on the first shot. He glanced down at his pant leg. "Ugh. That's going to leave a stain."

Rory closed in with a very impressive glare, but the Doctor got the resonance sorted out and the holoscreen popped to life.

It was all a jumble as countless images floated out into the corridor and where they passed through them it almost tickled. It was very difficult to distinguish one image from another, different places and times, but the Doctor had a knack for it and knew what he was looking for.

Amy was also very focused on what she wanted and out of thousands of overlapping images of civilisations rising and falling, she spotted a second and a half of River Song skulking off with a baby in her arms. "There! River was carrying a baby! Was that my daughter?"

"Yes, yes, she already told you she was your daughter." Ah, this might be something. As he tried to fine-tune the images, another idea occurred to him.

"The baby!" Amy growled. "Is the baby Melody?"

"Amy, please, Melody and River are the same person. You have to stop thinking of her as two people. And, no, that baby isn't her. Without the Time Lords maintaining temporal integrity, it's ill-advised for anyone to interact with themselves across time streams. It gets messy. Wibbly, wobbly..."

"Timey, wimey," they all finished. Amy shot another Grimblinger.

"It's an old nursery rhyme," he mumbled.

"What?"

"An old nursery rhyme about Grimblingers. Innocently repeated by cheerful little Gallifreyan tots. I never thought that they must have once been real."

"Like 'Ring Around The Rosy' being about the Black Death?" Amy asked.

"Children are gruesome little things when you think about it. Ah! Here we go."

A central image appeared. A little dark-haired girl was drawing on paper and talking to herself, or rather, judging by the rhythmic rolling of her head, she was singing.

"So, what's this one singing about?" Rory wondered. "Black Death or Time Bugs?"

"Why do you keep calling them bugs?" the Doctor asked. "They haven't got anything in common with insects apart from the...."

"Is _that_ Melody?" The girl didn't look anything like Amy or Rory or River or the baby that Amy had last held in her arms, but he understood that Amy was grasping at straws now.

"No, this is a different little girl," the Doctor said kindly, "but she needs our help too."

"Who's the old man?" Rory asked. The projections had focused in on an old man, different images of him spinning around the edges of the little girl like a Ferris Wheel.

"Ah, the projector has a neural interface," the Doctor said. "That's an idea I have, the way it all sorts itself out. Do you know that most cultures view time as a giant wheel?"

Amy shot two more Grimblingers.

"Okay, so we need to go...um... _this_ way." He pointed back toward the direction of the unpleasant gurgling sounds.

"That way?"

"Yes."

"We just came from that way."

"Yes."

"Doctor."

"It's just that _this_ little girl is _that_ way."

"Who is she?"

"It's complicated."

Amy glared.

"And we need to run very, very fast if we're to make it past the Grimblingers."

Amy still glared.

"So...running?"

"You can run and talk at the same time, yes?"

"Not while doing either to greatest efficiency. Okay, quick sum up: little girl in danger that way and we are going to save her. Safest if we all go together, so, on three...?"

"And you will be answering questions on three."

The Doctor sighed. Was it really that much to ask for a tiny bit of personal sympathy in this situation? It was, after all, _his_ life that was being torn inside out here as much as anyone else's. "All right. Agreed. On three. One. Two. Three! Rassilon was the first to harness the power of time!" he shouted over his shoulder as he hurdled over Grimblingers.

"You _had_ to ask him _that_?" Amy snarled as she ran after him.

"Sorry," Rory apologised as she sprinted at her side. "It's just that I _would_ like to know who's trying to kill us."

"He's not trying to kill us," the Doctor reassured him as he jumped over another Grimblinger. "Trust me. We are the last people in the whole of time and space that Rassilon wants to kill. Provided, of course, that he knows who we are, which he should, but he might not. I only found out myself recently. And I would think that would be something I'd remember to mention. Although...there was that time he tried to destroy the entire Earth and we were all on it at the time." All right. That admittedly was worrying. Rassilon apparently did _not_ know who they were and that didn't seem possible, unless River...

"What?!" Amy shouted indignantly, stomping on a tentacle.

He and River were going to have to have a chat, sooner rather than later. But not now.

"Look, Amy, I am almost entirely sure that Rassilon is probably not trying to kill us. We're just being a bit of a nuisance and it would appear that he does not have a surplus of patience in that area. Also..." The Doctor peered round the corner solely for the purpose of checking for more Grimblingers and not at all so as to not be making eye contact with either of them when he said it. "He might just suspect that we're here to kidnap his daughter."

An unsettling quiet enveloped the corridor. He could hear gurgling three or four corridors away. He hesitantly looked back.

Amy was glaring at him.

Rory kicked a Grimblinger with enough force that it exploded in a rain of not-gears when it hit the far wall.

"Yes," the Doctor admitted, "I did fear that that might not go over very well."

"You want us to help you kidnap Rassilon's daughter?" Amy asked.

"Did I say 'kidnap'? I meant rescue. It's a rescue really. Really a rescue."

"So as soon as we've saved her from the Grimblingers, we give her back to Rassilon?" Rory asked.

"Nnnnnot as such, nnnooo...maybe? Okay, yeah, yes, absolutely. After we've rescued her and she's safe from the Grimblingers, at our first opportunity, we return her to Rassilon. Fine. Okay. Okay?"

"Define 'at our first opportunity' for us then," Rory insisted.

"At our first opportunity in which we are somewhat _more_ almost entirely certain that a mad Time Lord is not trying to kill us."

"Rassilon's a Time Lord?"

"Yes, I thought I explained that."

"Not very well."

The Doctor checked around the corner again to make sure it was still clear. "And we're running! Yes, Rassilon is a Time Lord. He was, in fact, the first Time Lord."

"You said there weren't any other Time Lords," Amy panted. "You're supposed to be the last of the Time Lords. How can he be the first if you're the last?"

"Did I mention that nearly all cultures describe time as a great wheel? Honestly, I should have seen it coming. I can't believe I'm going to let it all go so wrong though. I mean, I'm not a bad chap, am I?"

Rory proved unexpectedly nimble and somehow ended up in the Doctor's direct path. "Doctor," he asked suspiciously, "are _you_ Rassilon?"

"You know, that's kind of a funny story. Oh, look, a ladder!" The Doctor climbed up and through the hatch in the ceiling.

For a moment there was silence. Well, silence apart from the clanging of their feet on the metal rungs as they climbed the ladder and also apart from the sound of Grimblingers digesting—well, not so much digesting as _decaying_ —all obstacles in their path and, okay, also apart from that horrible scream in the distance. (But sometimes you just had to compartmentalise, tell yourself it probably wasn't anyone you knew, and move on.) For the practical purposes at hand, it was silent for a few moments, but Amy could be counted on to not let this go.

"Doctor," she echoed Rory's question, " _are_ you Rassilon?"

The Doctor stepped off the ladder onto a catwalk and glanced around at the inner workings of the space station—and the hundreds of Grimblingers currently inhabiting it.

"Run!"

They all dashed down the catwalk as it visibly rusted, dove down the next access hatch, and landed in a corridor adjacent to where they'd last been. "Remind me, no more shortcuts," the Doctor said. Rory nodded. However, the instant she had the hatch locked down, Amy fairly screamed, " _Are you?!_ "

"Oddly enough, actually, no."

"Why is that odd?" Rory asked.

"Because, well, frankly," he admitted, "because I've often had this nagging feeling that I might be." He wandered around for a moment as he got his bearings and then pointed them in the direction they should be running.

"Why?" Rory asked.

"Rassilon was _the_ most pivotal figure in Time Lord history. He was the forefather of Time Lords. He harnessed a black hole. He established the dominion of our race over time. Turned the ethereal into the malleable, something that could be tinkered and re-built. The foreman of time, if you will. Absolutely everything can be traced back to Rassilon."

"And so you figured who else could that possibly be but you?" Amy huffed.

"It was just an _idea_."

"What did you mean when you said you wondered where _you'd_ gone wrong then?"

"Rassilon was considered to be a noble figure for the most part. A genius. A wise man. And then, it...it went a bit off the rails somewhere. They say he became obsessed with immortality."

"Invulnerability, you mean?" Rory asked. "Because, barring sudden violent incidents, aren't Time Lords already immortal?"

"Theoretically, but in practice there's a limit to the number of regenerations allowed."

"So Time Lords _are_ mortal?"

"Only voluntarily," the Doctor shrugged, "it's more of a rule than a fact. And rules..."

"And you're _sure_ you're not Rassilon?"

"Positive."

"You're still not answering our questions," Amy pointed out. "Why did you suspect you might one day be Rassilon? How can there be another Time Lord when you claim to be the last? And how is it all your fault?"

"I didn't say it was all my fault!" he huffed. "I was just thinking out loud that I'd gone wrong somewhere, but the more I think about it, I think River may have been the one who went wrong by trying to keep me out of it."

"What's River got to do with this?"

"Well, you saw that image. That actually happened, will happen I mean. I think she was sneaking off with the baby."

"You said that wasn't...."

"It wasn't. There are trillions and trillions of babies out there that are not yours. All right?"

"Doctor," Amy growled.

"Right. Down to the wire, so in summary: I was the last Time Lord. The TARDIS was the last TARDIS. And then the two of you..."

He skidded to a stop outside a locked door and took a moment to waggle an accusing finger at them before pulling his sonic screwdriver back out of his pocket to fiddle with the lock.

"...went and...and spent your wedding night on my TARDIS and Melody Song Pond River..."

Rory added "Williams" quietly but the Doctor ignored him.

"...was conceived in the _time vortex energy_. Have you any idea what that means?"

They looked at him blankly.

"A baby conceived in time vortex energy." It was obvious, wasn't it? "Ripples in the pond. Pond in the ripples." He smiled. They glared. "Okay, bad time for puns. The point is that River is practically a Time Lady herself."

"She's human."

"Yes, but...." This next bit might just be messy. Humans were so unpredictable. "A human conceived in time vortex energy...and _her_ child...."

"Can we please find my baby before you start making me a grandmother?"

"Unfortunately, no. The downside to time travel is that you don't always get to live your life in the order you'd expect. If it helps you can put it all in future tense. Time travel and grammar have a rather fluid relationship. River _will_ one day have a child who _will_ be a Time Lord and that means there _will_ be Time Lords again."

The door popped open and revealed yet another corridor. At that exact moment, a Grimblinger wobbled out of a ceiling vent and nearly wrapped a tentacle around Amy's laser rifle before she realised it. The barrel tarnished where it had been touched. "Run!" she screamed. "And keep talking!" she added.

"Look, do me a favor and don't tell the TARDIS that I said this, but it would seem that the entire Gallifreyan race owes its renewed existence to the fact that you think Rory is irresistibly pretty."

"Okay, fine," Amy agreed. "That sounds sensible."

"What?" Rory asked.

"We're the Adam and Eve of the next wave of Time Lords," Amy said. "Whatever. I don't care. My baby is _out there_. Why are we _here_?"

The Doctor tried to scoff, but didn't have the breath to spare. "River's child is a Time Lord. Unfortunately, not what you'd call a prime example. Bit of only-child syndrome possibly, prone to fits of arrogance, meddling in dangerous things that...."

"So nothing like any Time Lord we've ever met then?" Amy asked.

"All right. Point. River's child _is_ a _prime_ example of a Time Lord. River seems to think it's just a phase. The terrible two-millenniums or something? I can't imagine where we went wrong. General bad parenting, I expect."

"Did you just call my daughter a bad mother?" Amy asked.

"No, no, but...well, you have to admit that I'm not necessarily the best fatherhood material."

Amy and Rory digested this information and went off in rather different directions with it.

"Rassilon is your son?" Amy asked.

"You're going to have sex with my daughter?!" Rory bellowed.

"Eventually." The Doctor decided that now would be a good time to run just a _little_ bit faster.

"My daughter?!" Rory yelled.

"You had sex in my TARDIS!" the Doctor yelled back over his shoulder

" _Daughter_ trumps TARDIS! You're going to have sex with my daughter?!"

"When she's an adult! Much, _much_ later in her personal time line!"

And then the Last Centurion caught up with the last Time Lord and pinned him to the wall. " _Define_ 'adult' because River said she met you when she was a girl."

"It hasn't happened yet. I don't _know_ how it happens. But I _am_ reasonably sure that I'm _not_ going to take advantage of an innocent school girl. All right?"

Rory relaxed his grip but did not fully release him.

"You do realise that you're setting yourself the task of defending the chastity of River Song?"

Rory flinched only briefly and then set his jaw in a look of determination that the Doctor found truly frightening. "I expect I'll be rather busy from here out, yes."

"Word of advice: never let her anywhere near Wales."

The Doctor reached over his shoulder with the sonic screwdriver and released the invisible door panel that Rory had him pinned against. It was a neat trick. He expected _one_ of them to say it was a neat trick, but they followed him into the hidden chamber in silence.

"It's not fair really," he grumbled. "All this mess to clean up, consequences of things I haven't even done yet." There was another door around here somewhere. Possibly a small one, he reminded himself. Look low. "Mind you. I suppose there are advantages to reversing the normal order. What if you had the really horrible hangover first and then got to enjoy being drunk gently tapering off to sobriety? So reverse child rearing and you wonder where you went wrong and then it's lots of loud music and sulking and attitude and then they're knocking footballs through the neighbour’s windows and the next thing you know they're in nappies. And once you've done everything that you can, you can relax and really enjoy the fun bits."

If only one _or_ the other of them had hit him, it probably wouldn't have hurt very much. Though not obvious on casual medical scans, the Gallifreyan skull was just slightly denser than human and thus capable of sustaining harder knocks than those received by the average bear. However, Amy and Rory somehow managed to smack him in exactly the same way at the exact same moment on the exact same, but opposite, part of his head and the resulting resonance gave him the idea that he should perhaps have a little sit-down on this nice bit of floor.

"That was uncalled for," he slurred.

He quickly threw up both hands defensively. "My comment," he explained, "was uncalled for. Sorry. I keep forgetting that I'm talking to the in-laws."

"So you do at least intend to make an honest woman out of her then?" Amy asked.

The Doctor scoffed. "Isn't anyone concerned whether she makes an honest man out of _me_?"

Rory shrugged and offered to help him to his feet, but the Doctor waved him off.

"I've found it."

"Found what?" Amy asked.

"The door." The Doctor opened it and crawled in.

"Doctor," Rory asked, "why are you crawling into the cupboard?"

"It's not a cupboard," his voice echoed back. "Come along."

Amy and Rory shrugged at each other and then crawled through the tiny door. On the other side, they straightened up to find themselves in a large open room full of books and one tiny little girl drawing in the middle of the floor.

"Hello," she said. "I wasn't expecting visitors."

"Just so we're clear," Amy whispered, "that is _not_ my baby?"

"Right."

"Not River's baby?"

"Right."

"Not your baby?"

"Right. One more guess and you've got it."

"Rassilon's baby?"

"Bingo."

"Why does it keep coming back to babies?" Rory asked.

"I am not a baby!" the toddler said indignantly.

"Of course you're not," the Doctor agreed. "You must be...two? Two and a half?"

"Two and three quarters!" she said.

"Barely a sneeze in the lifespan of a Time Lord," he whispered to Rory and Amy. "It all keeps coming back to babies, Rory, because it all keeps coming _back_. The wheel has completed a circle and it's all starting over. Babies are very symbolic of new beginnings so the TARDIS keeps bringing us to them."

"What's your name?" Rory asked the girl.

"I am Lady Susongeliawiluntharian."

Rory blinked at her for a moment.

"Is it all right if we just call you Susan?"

Lady Susongeliawiluntharian tilted her head to one side while she considered this.

Amy knelt down to make formal introductions. "That's the Doctor over there. This is my husband Rory. And my name is Amelia, but you can call me Amy."

"Hello, Amy. You can call me Susan," Susan agreed.

"What are you drawing, Susan?" Amy asked.

"I'm not drawing. I'm practising. It's seven-dimensional geometry."

"My word," the Doctor breathed. "I barely grasped four-dimensional geometry at that age."

"You must not be very smart," Susan said.

"Oh, isn't _she_ cheeky?" Amy said.

The Doctor began rummaging amongst the building blocks and model airships. "She's only going to get worse. She's a genius being raised by a mad scientist." There was a shrieking sound in the distance followed by more gurgling. "And it's all gone a bit out of his control as you may have noticed."

"Where's your mum?" Amy asked.

"What's a mum?" the girl asked.

Amy turned misty eyes at the Doctor. "Wh...?"

"I don't know who her mother was. A 51st Century Time Agent perhaps. Most likely another Time Lord."

"You said there _weren't_ any other Time Lords."

"There _weren't_. And then you two," he glanced at the child and re-thought the end of that sentence. "And then you two set the wheel of time back in motion." He started pulling things out of the toy box and tossing them on the floor.

Rory looked at the little girl's doodles and since he couldn't make head or tail out of any of the writing or diagrams, he focused on the little swirly bit that had what appeared to be a smiley face drawn in it. "What's that?" he asked her.

"They're all back," the Doctor grinned. "Time travel makes for fluid grammar, remember? When you're talking about Time Lords, everything that _will be_ already _has been_." He waggled his fingers in all directions. "Out there, where and when they belong, there are Time Lords." He grinned even wider. "Very annoying race of people. You won't like any of them."

The child was explaining relative dimensions to Rory, who was nodding politely, but the Doctor had hit bottom on the toy box without finding what he was looking for. That was perplexing. He would have bet money on the toy box.

"Doctor, what are you looking for?" Amy asked.

"The way out."

Amy glanced at the small door they'd crawled in through, but there were ominous sounds now coming from the other side of it. "We're trapped, aren't we?"

"Don't be silly. Only if there's no other way out. And I'm sure there is another way out."

"Which you thought might be in the toy box?"

"Help me look will you? The opening might be very small since she's just a little girl."

"Amy," Rory interrupted, "I think you should listen to this."

Rory actually looked like he half-understood at least some of what little Susan was saying, which the Doctor very much doubted, but it was perfectly possible he was recognizing a few key phrases here and there and was putting some of it together.

The gurgling outside was growing louder, but unlike every other door they had put between themselves and the Grimblingers so far, the little door seemed to be holding.

"Doctor," Rory said, "you're looking for a door right?"

"Yes, but it might not look like a door. It could be a toy chest or a carpet bag."

"Or a door?"

"We've established that."

"A strong door that can keep monsters out?"

"Yes."

"And little girls safely in?"

"Yes. Oh."

"What?" Amy asked.

"If we're already inside, where are the controls?"

Rory knelt down and asked the girl, "Do you know where the controls are?"

"Controls? Do you mean the emergency release?"

"Yes, love, this is an emergency and we need the emergency release."

"Oh, smashing, I've always wanted to try it."

"Try it?" The Doctor felt a wave of panic that he was unaccustomed to. "It hasn't been tested yet?" Of course, it was early days, the wheel had come back around to the _very_ beginning. It was brand new. It hadn't been tested.

"Of course not," the child scoffed. "It will self-destruct as soon as we've used it."

"Oh, no."

"What?" Amy demanded.

"It's an early prototype. Single-use only."

" _What's_ an early prototype?!" she screamed.

"The room we're in, Amy. The nursery."

"How can a room be a prototype?"

The girl dragged the toy chest away from the wall and for a moment the Doctor thought he was vindicated. "Ah ha!"

She rolled her eyes at him and tipped it on end. She clambered up onto it and standing on tip-toe reached up to the mobile hanging from the ceiling.

"Where do you want to go?" she asked.

The Doctor rattled off the coordinates where he'd sent the TARDIS.

She spun a few bits and then tugged at the dangling cut-out that was shaped like a duck and the room began to spin and shake.

"What's going on?" Amy asked.

"Emergency transportation," Susan explained. "I call it a TARDIS."

" _You_ call it a TARDIS?" Amy repeated.

"Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. TARDIS."

"Came up with that name all on your own, did you?" Amy asked.

"Yes."

"Amy, what have I been telling you?" the Doctor said. "We've gone back to the beginning of Time Lord history. Rassilon has only just harnessed the black hole. Susan really _is_ the first person to name a TARDIS."

And then there was a popping sensation and a roil of nausea and all of them—child included—were on their knees outdoors in the dirt and gravel losing their breakfasts. When their stomachs were finally empty, the Doctor panted. "For a prototype, that could have gone much worse."

"Doctor," Rory asked, "why are we in a rock quarry?"

"Because this is where the TARDIS is." He nodded at the distance where a corner of blue was just visible above the rise of rocks. "I never have figured out why she's so fond of rock quarries."

"So, what now?" Amy asked.

"Well, first we take _this_ little one somewhere safe," the Doctor said, "and then we can concentrate on finding _your_ little one. And eventually River and I will have a chat about the _other_ little one. All right?"

"Where are we taking her?"

"Well, we could take her back to the powerful mastermind where she will grow up to be a very smart young lady..."

"Genius," the girl corrected him.

"...who will also be cheeky and arrogant and possibly insane and evil or..."

The Doctor let it hang in the air. It really _had_ been a rescue. Rassilon had abandoned the station when the Grimblingers had got out of control. He wouldn't even know she'd survived if they didn't tell him.

"Or...?" Amy asked.

"Well, I happen to know where we can find a cranky old man who is surprisingly good with difficult children."

"We have to take her back to her family," Rory insisted.

"We _are_ her family. I explained that already."

"And this old man?"

"Also family. It's..."

"...complicated," they all repeated.

"What do you say, young lady?" he asked the little girl. "Would you like to go back to a boring old nursery or would you like to ride in a proper TARDIS and have adventures?"

"What are 'adventures'?"

The Doctor looked at Amy. "There, that's a vote for adventures if I ever heard one."

Amy snorted and began climbing out of the quarry without a word.

The Doctor turned back to little Susan who was staring at the clouds like she'd never seen such a thing before, which she probably hadn't. Definitely overdue for adventures. "Come along. This way." And he led her up out of the quarry at a trajectory approximately sixty-seven degrees west of that which Amy had taken. (Amy would probably be annoyed and blame him, but if she'd asked which way they were going before stomping off in the direction of the TARDIS, she wouldn't have any extra walking to do.)

Rory tried to call Amy back, but she gave no indication that she heard him. He seemed a bit torn as to which way to go, but finally scrambled off after Amy. This gave the Doctor a little breathing room, but he knew he didn't have long before they both caught back up with them so he hurried Susan along. "Come on. You'll feel much better after a nice cold lemonade, yes?"

"What's a lemonade?"

There it was. Exactly where he'd predicted, which was always a nice surprise. On a plateau, about halfway up the quarry, stood an old man in checked trousers and next to him stood the TARDIS. It did not look anything at all like a familiar police box and wasn't even the slightest bit blue, but he'd recognize the old girl even in disguise. (Also, she seemed to be having a bit of difficulty staying in phase. Pity he hadn't noticed that before the chameleon circuit melted.)

"All right, Susan, not a lot of time to explain so just a quick re-cap. You are Susan."

"Yes." Susan seemed happy with the name.

"That is your grandfather."

"What's a grandfather?"

"That is. Don't worry, you've got years to figure out what he is. All right?"

She nodded.

"Do you see the large rock next to him that looks like it's trying to be inconspicuous?"

"It's not doing a very good job of it."

"Susan, listen carefully, this is important. Whatever you do, do not—under any circumstances—sass the TARDIS."

" _That_ is a TARDIS?"

"Indeed. A proper TARDIS, multi-use and practically indestructible. Your grandfather there is going to give you lemonade and sandwiches and take you absolutely anywhere you want to go—more or less, he hasn't really got the hang of steering yet, but don't tell him so. It will only make him cross. Tell him that you are from his future. You _are_ his granddaughter. Are, will be, always have been, etc. Warn him that he mustn’t ask you too many questions on account of spoilers and that he also shouldn't pay too much attention to any continuity errors on account of migraines."

Susan nodded.

"It's especially important that you don't mention your father's name. Your father was vain enough to let his name get written down in a lot of history books, which he really shouldn't have done. Time Lords are a bit funny about names. When you live as long as we do and don't live your life in a straight line, you're bound to trip over your own history from time to time and names tend to get in the way. Particularly when they end up on warrants and so forth. That's why Susan is a much better name than Lady Susongeliawiluntharian. Less specific."

Amy and Rory were scrambling toward them across the rocks now and the old man in the checked pants had noticed and was walking slowly and purposely this way.

"And also why Grandfather is a much better name than," and here he leaned in and whispered in her ear. "And if your grandfather doubts who you are at all, you just use his name on him and he'll believe you. Now run along."

Susan caught on to the whole adventuring business straight away and toddled quickly across the rocks to the old man who was going to give her something called sandwiches.

The Doctor backed away and then turned and ran to intercept Rory and Amy before things got awkward.

"Doctor," Amy scolded. "What are you doing _now_?"

He stole a glance over his shoulder at the old man who looked completely dumbfounded and horrified and a teensy bit intrigued, which was exactly how he'd remembered it so everything was falling into place perfectly.

"Ah," the Doctor stalled, "the thing is, um...."

And behind him a large rock whined and shuddered and vanished. There. Done. He couldn't undo it if he'd wanted to.

"I've sent her to live with her grandfather," he explained brightly, marching back to his big blue box.

" _You_ , you mean," Amy said. She'd clearly recognized the TARDIS's tell-tale whirr or it might have taken her longer to sort it out. "You've sent her into your future?"

"Past actually. I've already raised Susan you see. Loud music and sulking and attitude. Check, check, and check." The Doctor was feeling quite effervescent now. He'd pulled it off. Time was ticking the right way round again. There were Time Lords again—pompous, meddling Time Lords, everywhere and everywhen and the more he thought about it, the more sandwiches sounded like a good idea. He wondered if there was any lettuce left in the kitchen.

"You said it was impossible for anyone to interact with themselves across time streams."

"I said no such thing," he huffed. "I said it was _ill-advised_."

"You said we were taking her back to Rassilon," Amy said, but she only sounded tired now, no more shouting and indignation. She followed him back into the TARDIS without a single stomp.

"Did I mention that Rassilon once—will once, grammar, sorry— _will_ try to destroy Earth and nearly killed me a few years ago." The Doctor had to admit to himself that he really ought to have paid more attention to his courses in Relational Linguistics when he was younger.

He cheerfully turned knobs and flipped switches on the console and, to his absolute shock, Rory reached around him and unflipped them.

"Doctor," Rory said. "You realise that you have just kidnapped a child."

"Rescued." The Doctor frowned. He turned more knobs and pulled more levers and flipped more switches, occasionally the same ones more than once so that Rory couldn't possibly keep track of the correct settings. The TARDIS whirred and the console lit up.

In a quite comical move, Rory desperately stabbed the pause button on the video playback monitor.

The TARDIS paused.

It shouldn't have. It really shouldn't have.

The playback pause button had nothing whatsoever to do with the other console controls and even if it had, there was no single button you could press to just freeze the dematerialisation sequence. One cannot simply pause a TARDIS.

Unless, of course, the TARDIS herself wanted to pause the dematerialisation sequence perhaps because, for instance, the Pretty One had asked her nicely by pressing a completely useless button. The Doctor emphatically was not even a tiny bit jealous. He _was_ very annoyed.

"Do _not_...." He fully intended to give Rory a piece of his mind about the inappropriateness, not to mention danger, of randomly pressing buttons on his ship, but Rory was clearly not receptive at the moment. Rory was glaring again. There'd been an awful lot of glaring today, nearly all of it at him, and nearly all of that rather uncalled for, mostly.

"You said that Rassilon was a noble wise man to begin with?" Rory asked, squinting at him.

"Well, originally, yes. A bit reckless at times perhaps, but that's often how the great discoveries are made, aren't they? According to history, he was a brilliant scientist who became a wise and fair leader of our people. Until...he lost himself in the power I suppose. Ruler of the Time Lords is as close to absolute power as you can get, you know. That's bound to have an effect. I just keep thinking that if we just try a bit harder, River and I can raise him properly this time around and...."

"Doctor," Rory interrupted. "Would the Grimblinger experiment have got out of control like that if we hadn't stowed away on the transport shuttle?"

"What? You don't think that was our fault? The guards..."

"...were shooting at us, the stowaways who shouldn't have been there to begin with. So if we hadn't been..."

"But we _had_ to rescue Susan."

"From the Grimblingers?"

"Yes."

"The Grimblingers who escaped in the first place indirectly because of us trying to rescue her from the Grimblingers?"

"Er."

"Or do you mean that we _had_ to rescue her from Rassilon?"

"Well, yes, that too."

"Rassilon the brilliant scientist and noble ruler?

"Who will one day go on to be a..."

"Today, you mean?" Rory asked.

"What?" The Doctor didn't like it when other people acted as though they knew things he didn't and at the moment Rory had this deeply annoying _knowing_ look about him.

"You keep saying that history shows it all _went_ wrong somewhere. You keep saying that it's _going to go_ wrong. And you keep saying that you have this nagging feeling that it's your fault somehow. But you don't seem to have noticed at all when it actually _was going_ wrong." The Doctor only looked at him blankly and Rory shook his head and continued, "Today, Doctor, just before lunch time."

"It's lunch time now," the Doctor pointed out automatically. After enough time travel, the only clock that any of them paid any attention to was the one in the ship's galley.

"Yes, Doctor."

The Doctor scratched the back of his neck and pondered this for a bit. “Do you suppose that's what River meant when she said I was a meddling arse?”

“A contributing factor, more than likely,” Amy agreed. “But there's no reason to think it was just that.”

“But I can't.... There's no way to.... Oh, dear.”

Amy squinted at him. “I would encourage massive amounts of guilt and soul searching at this juncture, except that we've got a different child to un-kidnap just now.”

The Doctor nodded vaguely and Rory pushed an utterly irrelevant button and the TARDIS un-paused.

**Author's Note:**

> DOCTOR: _verb_ , to doctor: to amend, to repair, to fix, to fiddle, to tinker


End file.
